Nothing gets past Om Malik. The tech blogger is quickly becoming the industry standard for voice-over-IP news. But as of press time, he hasn't blogged about free Skype-to-phone calling, announced today at Skype's official blog.

I hear some of you weren't in New York for New Yorker writer Ken Auletta's talk with Yahoo CEO Terry Semel (Shh, don't admit it). So you'll be glad to know the New Yorker posted a crisp little video of the whole interview on its web site. (If the page acts up, try directly streaming it here.)

Harvard embargoes a press release on curing the blind, then sends a one-hour correction to the whole recipient list. Just wanted to give y'all a heads up so this news can break a whole hour earlier — after everyone sits on it for four days. The journo who passed this on explains why these embargoes happen:

Google Press Day's big finale: a chat with the Triumvirate.

Google's back from break for its Press Squeeze. Journalist Om Malik says the wifi's down, so don't look for too much liveblogging. (But Phillip Lenssen has a great live-blog going at Google Blogoscoped.) So join me in remotely watching the live video feed.

Right, you're gonna wanna watch the live feed of the Google Press Event with me, 'cause that's what we're liveblogging now. At work? I'll try to explain it all as it goes down.

8:00-9:00 AM: Journalists pour onto the Googleplex for Press Day 2006.
9:00 AM: Hand-picked collection of Valley's major press is in the hands of Google.
9:01 AM: Live feed window opened. Voice message received: "This stream is not available. Please try again later."

From Google to Valleywag (and over 60 other media hacks), 4:30 PM:

Looks like Gawker Media bloggers weren't the only writers running "hangover articles" yesterday. SF Chronicle writer Carrie Kirby filled an entire article about two guys working with text ads.

Tech columnist Steve Gillmor was never known for his clarity of phrase, but this metaphor is just too mixed for one man to parse. Can anyone explain the image Steve builds here as he describes controversial columnist Nick Carr?

It's the Financial Times' turn to run another Bubble Watch piece ("the trend story that never was"). Two writers and a third doing "additional reporting" fail to turn up little insight, even with the willing, quotable help of super-VC Steve Jurvetson.

Pitch Magazine says it's found the tech world's James Frey in hacker and search engineer John Flowers. In an eight-page piece, Pitch writer David Martin crows over inconsistencies in Flowers' history (as given by Flowers in speeches, interviews, and his blog). But, so what? Maybe there are still some standards in memoir publishing, but this is a hacker. Deception and braggadocio are prerequisites.

I was so stoked. Noah Robischon, editor-at-large of Valleywag's big brother Gizmodo had passed me an invite to Google's May 10 Press Day (Hear Eric Schmidt speak! Bump/rub/brush shoulders with John Battelle! Ask Marissa Mayer to take a Turing Test!). After gleefully tapping in my info and getting a "thank you" page, I assumed I was in — in a few weeks I'd be back on the Plex, my first visit there in a Gawker Media capacity.

Can they change their names and end the confusion already? Wired News bitchslaps the letter-writers who, inspired by a dead-wrong Huffington Post article, went apeshit on Wired Magazine for an old Wired News story. Wired News ed-in-chief starts his reply:

It's dead, Jim. Several reporters and spam fighters have checked on the Alan Ralsky story and told me it's false. The FBI's Detroit field office told one journalist that the Spam King was not arrested or held, is not in custody, and has not been indicted.

Online video! It's hot! It's new (except for Star Wars Kid and the hillbilly montage and Numa Numa and the Crazy Frog and—)! It's the way to market Firefox or report on the Maker Faire. And it's the center of a slow news cycle.

It's not in the papers yet — damn those lead times — but a media frenzy is frothing around the fresh meat of the Spam King's arrest. (The backstory: Alan Ralsky, pictured, is in the DOJ's hands, and they're grilling him for info on other hackers and spammers in a plea-bargain session.) Ralsky's quickly becoming a useless pressure point for the DOJ as reporters blow up the story, alerting everyone in the spam and hacking world and sending them scuttling out of sight. Major media contact for the hacker community, MemeHacker, sends this chat log from a conversation with another hacker:

Far from the innovative leader the media treats them as, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe were just "cabin boys" for MySpace, says blogger Trent Lapinski. The 19-year-old journalism student blows open the scandalous story behind MySpace — the story every major paper missed. The makers of MySpace included an ex-con and a whole family of insider traders.

In the chat after his Berkeley lecture ("The State of American Media") this week, Dan Rather talked to ZDNet journalist Steve Gillmor, who came with indie journalist (and ex-Mercury-News columnist) brother Dan Gillmor and Steve's look-alike friend, RSS czar Dave Winer. To save you from caption confusion, here's the breakdown:

CNNMoney.com's senior writer demonstrates how to turn a serviceable, specific story into trend tripe. It just takes an eight-word lede: